We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[Bob's World]

Another term for "jihad against the foreign invader" is resistance insurgency.

I think Dayuhan raises several good points in his posts. Consider this. Classic resistance is when a foreign invader physically occupies one's homeland. They have defeated one's formal military forces and forced the formal system of governance to surrender or flee. Only the populace is left in the fight. Often such populaces receive assistance from some outside source. In US doctrine that is called "unconventional warfare" or "UW."

In the Middle East I think in many countries and among many populaces we have a virtual form of foreign "occupation" going on. The West post-WWI, and the US post-WWII have applied a mix of physical and virtual occupation by policy; shaping governance in ways that suited those foreign governments and that left the populaces of the region powerless and irrelevant. When there was a greater threat, in the form of a Soviet desire to replace that Western influence with their own, those populaces generally tolerated that external influence. After all, they had tolerated the Ottomans for several hundred years.

But once that Soviet threat faded, and once the empowering effects of modern information tools connected and empowered these many diverse populaces in unprecedented ways, the people began to move on long suppressed resentments. AQ formed to leverage that latent energy toward their own ends, and employed those same information tools to show that a fairly small non-state group could conduct UW just like, or even better than, large powerful states such as Great Britain, Russia and the US.

Now, if one is that foreign power and wants to exercise complete dominion over some place and people, one must simply wage war and crush the people. It works. But, if on the other hand one simply wants to have influence and ensure flow of critical resources and keeping major sea lanes open, then one would be foolish to wage war. The other way to make a resistance go away is to remove the proverbial thorn from the lion's paw. This is a problem of policy. Not the Ends of policy, but rather the Ways and Means.

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

[Entropy]

The $64,000 question is: Where is Cat Z, and what is "voom"?

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

Have you read the book? In the book, the Cat shows up uninvited and helps himself to a bath. His bath leaves behind a bathtub ring which the Cat tries to clean. He cleans the tub, but in doing so, he creates another, slightly worse problem. He then tries to "clean" that. After several iterations the dirty "ring" grows and becomes too big for the Cat, so he enlists the cats in his hat. They only make the problem worse and worse. What started as a bathtub ring has grown to cover everything. At last the Cat releases the magic of "voom" which, in an instant, fixes everything.

The "essence" of voom is what everyone who royally F's up fantasizes about - it's the magic cure-all that will make it all better. It's the Dr. Seuss version of the Staples "Easy Button." (Or, rather, the "Easy Button" is the Staples version of "Voom.")

The long and short of it is that there's nothing that will magically come and save us from our mistakes. Sorry for the buzzkill.

"Oh the Places You'll Go" is probably a better Seuss book to use since its central lesson is about overcoming adversity.

[Dayuhan]

Another term for "jihad against the foreign invader" is resistance insurgency.

That would be insurgency against a foreign invader in your own country. Fighting in or funding insurgency in in another country is perhaps something different.

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "voom", but if anyone expects anything to pop out of a hat and clean up all the mess they are sadly mistaken. I don't see any quick or clean solution to this.

Of course we must evolve. We are evolving. So is everyone else, including our antagonists. Evolution isn't going to provide any absolute answer or any quick fix; it is a slow and messy process that must be continuously refined. The question now is not whether to evolve or not to evolve, but what direction evolution should take and how best to pursue the selected direction.

In the Middle East I think in many countries and among many populaces we have a virtual form of foreign "occupation" going on. The West post-WWI, and the US post-WWII have applied a mix of physical and virtual occupation by policy; shaping governance in ways that suited those foreign governments and that left the populaces of the region powerless and irrelevant. When there was a greater threat, in the form of a Soviet desire to replace that Western influence with their own, those populaces generally tolerated that external influence. After all, they had tolerated the Ottomans for several hundred years.

But once that Soviet threat faded, and once the empowering effects of modern information tools connected and empowered these many diverse populaces in unprecedented ways, the people began to move on long suppressed resentments. AQ formed to leverage that latent energy toward their own ends, and employed those same information tools to show that a fairly small non-state group could conduct UW just like, or even better than, large powerful states such as Great Britain, Russia and the US.

This I think is largely a speculative construct, and I don't see much real evidence to support it. AQ and its predecessor organizations have had considerable success in drawing recruits and funding to fight direct foreign military occupation of Muslim nations, forst by the Soviet Union and then by the US. Without such occupation they rapidly lose relevance and support. I see no evidence at all to suggest that people who travel to fight in faraway insurgencies or send money to support those insurgencies are doing that to change the pattern of governance in their own countries.

Now, if one is that foreign power and wants to exercise complete dominion over some place and people, one must simply wage war and crush the people. It works. But, if on the other hand one simply wants to have influence and ensure flow of critical resources and keeping major sea lanes open, then one would be foolish to wage war. The other way to make a resistance go away is to remove the proverbial thorn from the lion's paw. This is a problem of policy. Not the Ends of policy, but rather the Ways and Means.

Depends on what you mean by the thorn in the lion's paw. If you mean the lasting irritant of large scale US military presence in Muslim countries, I agree. If you think the thorn in the lion's paw is the way Muslim countries are governed... well, that's certainly a thorn but it's not our thorn and trying to mess with it is only going to make matters worse.

[jmm99]

Here's another little matrix, which illustrates the flexibility of the War Paradigm - when it is applied correctly:

Hartigan Fig 1, Direct-Indirect Matrix.jpg

from 2009 Hartigan (thesis), Why the Weak Win Wars - A Study of the Factors That Drive Strategy in Assymmetric Conflict.pdf.

See also, 2007 Mauldin (thesis), Analysis of the Inability of U.S. Military Leaders to Provide an Adequate Strategy.pdf, who gets too carried away with the "Indirect Approach". BTW: the "indirect approach" (as used by Hartigan and Mauldin) is not vintage, pure Liddell Hart. It is more Andre Beaufre and others thinking independently.

The bottom line is that a "Strong Power" (e.g., USA) must be prepared to use both Direct and Indirect Strategies in what in actuality will be a mixed War and Peace Paradigm - the pure forms of those paradigms died a long time ago.

Regards

Mike

[Bob's World]

A lot of good fodder for conversation here, that I will nick away at over the weekend. First, though, to be clear, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" is a child's book, and there is no magical "voom" that makes our current security challenges go away. "Voom" will be hard work, but more importantly voom will rely upon us first coming to a better understanding of the nature of the challenges we face, and one that takes much more ownership for causation on the parts of governments and governance, both our own and those we interact with abroad.

In many ways the US barreled into the greater Middle East much as the Cat enters into this family's home. In many ways we inadvertently left a "ring" from our actions. I think I would associate the parents coming home and the trouble that promises to bring with that of the local populaces becoming aware of what has happened and being postured to do something about it. The children are the governments of the region. They allowed the Cat in, they feel stuck with the Cat and uneasy with many of his antics, but in many ways they like having him around. But they know the relationship has created a mess and they fear what will happen when they are called to account. I would offer that one big difference is that the kids in the book care about what their parents think. The governments of the greater Middle East fear their populaces, but they by and large do not care about what they think so long as they comply to the lots cast for them.

The many Cats brought in to clean up the mess are like our many approaches to mitigate the effects of our actions and these dysfunctional relationships with these many governments (be they seen as friend or foe). We don't even consider how our very presence contributed so much to the problem, but have a hat full of solutions that we are willing to throw at the symptoms to "cure" or "defeat" the problems.

It's not perfect, but I believe it provides a better insight to what we are dealing with than Mr. Panetta's cancer analogy. How refreshing would it be for Mr. Panetta to look into a camera and say that Western governments, and particularly the US since WWII, are much like the Cat in the Hat, we have barged in to the homes of others in pursuit of our own self interests, we have left a mess, and to be honest, much of our efforts to clean up that mess have by and large served more to make the problem more distributed, more embedded, and more dangerous. We've drawn too much comfort from our perceptions of the good things we bring and too much comfort from the very real tactical successes we have had against aspect of the problem. But we don't understand this well, we don't own our own contributory role, and we don't think very strategically about the effects we need to shape with our engagement. We focus on approaches and first order effects, and those are largely moot in populace-based conflicts.

[Dayuhan]

The children are the governments of the region. They allowed the Cat in, they feel stuck with the Cat and uneasy with many of his antics, but in many ways they like having him around. But they know he's left a mess and they fear what will happen when they are called to account.

Not sure I buy that analogy. These governments are not exactly passive actors who let us in the door and watched helplessly while we made a mess. They are in many cases very much active and have a great deal to do with their own messes and their own successes. They are not children in any way, and our influence over them is in many cases much overrated.

Analogies aside, what specific policy or course of action would you suggest?

[Bob's World]

There needs to be several steps, but the first one is to recognize that our current understanding of ourselves and how we need to act to secure our interests; what those interests actually are; and the nature of the groups we currently label as "threats" and seek to defeat are all deeply flawed. Just admitting that is a huge step.

So step one is a step back.

Step two is to seriously recognize that others act upon their interests as they perceive them. Like us, they are often wrong as well in their perceptions, but right or wrong, what they perceive is what they perceive. What we perceive or wish them to perceive is interesting, but immaterial to reality.

So step two is to seriously seek to understand and appreciate how others (key individuals, non-state actors, significant populace groups, governments, etc) perceive their critical interests; what they see as their reasonable spheres of influence, and what their near and long term goals are. Too often we tend to see everyone in the context of our own interests, values and goals, and it give us a bias of perspective that leads us to not appreciating the friction we cause and also leads us to being operationally surprised.

Those may seem to general for your desire for specific tangible actions in specific places; but how belongs to the executor. We need to begin by first getting to a better understanding. More steps and some examples of specific actions to follow.

[Bob's World]

Step 3 for the US would be to recognize the anomaly of the Cold War era, and the dangers of extending and expanding Cold War institutions and relationships as a framework for best approaching and securing our interests in the modern era. This does not mean to throw the baby out with the bath, but it does mean we need a major overhaul of institutions and relationships to go along with our overhauled perspective described in the steps above.

We need to re-balance our partnerships and figure out how we lend others the security of our strengths without at the same time adopting the vulnerabilities of those we help. The US sits on the global key terrain, and everyone seems to know that except us. We should be as secure as Fort Knox, but instead we are as vulnerable as South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, or a dozen others. WWI came tragically of excessive commitment to outdated alliances. WWIII will probably come from the same thing.

Step 4 is to recognize that less is more. To get a revamped State Department (ideally one that sees itself more as a Foreign Office, with a robust Non-state Department to complement our State Department efforts, and an end to the odd idea of having a counterterrorism division in our diplomacy agency) back in lead for US foreign policy armed with a new agenda based upon this new understanding.

Step 4 also includes a major reframe and resizing of our military. Everything and person who threatens us or who could harm us is a "threat" to us. Cyber is largely a private function for private activities, and a civil function for governmental activities. It is not a military mission as a whole. The military needs to be able to leverage cyber tools to the max, be able to play unplugged with no notice, and have reasonable mechanisms in place to reduce the likelihood or duration of having to play unplugged. Land forces need to be downsized and tailored to be a solid core of warfighting capability to build upon if a need for warfighting should emerge. The Navy and Air Force need to deter major threats and keep our access to resources and markets open. BL, the Army can assume risk on strategic missions, and the AF can assume risk on tactical missions. So less bazillion dollar fighter plane programs and less ground combat units in peace.